THIS WEEKEND
It was another box office touchdown for Adam Sandler as his smash comedy
hit The Waterboy
sacked two strong competitors and retained the top spot with a $24.4M weekend
gross according to final
studio figures. Down just 38%, the Buena Vista film displayed a very good
hold, especially for a movie with such poor reviews. Moviegoers seem to
be ignoring critics and buying tickets for The
Waterboy because they want to see a fun
movie. After ten days of release, the Adam Sandler pic, which also stars
Kathy Bates and Henry Winkler, has amassed an enormous sum of $79.1M putting
it on course for a final tally that might end up in the $150-160M region.
The table below shows how some other recent blockbusters have performed
after ten days:

Title

Opening ($M)

Ten Day ($M)

Final ($M)

Release

Air
Force One

37.1

80.7

172.6

Jul.
97

The
Waterboy

39.4

79.1

Nov.
98

Deep
Impact

41.2

74.0

140.5

May
98

Ransom

34.2

67.1

136.5

Nov.
96

Ace
Ventura 2

37.8

65.0

108.4

Nov.
95

Phil Barlow, distribution
chief of Buena Vista, noted that The Waterboy
is already showing signs of significant repeat business and very good word
of mouth. The film's average of $9,133 per theater easily outdistanced
all other movies over the weekend and its 38% depreciation almost mirrored
the second weekend dropoff of Sandler's last hit The
Wedding Singer which slipped 35%. Look
for the gridiron comedy to pass the $80.2M gross of The
Wedding Singer on Monday to become Sandler's
highest-grossing film. The Waterboy
was also the first film to spend back-to-back November weekends at number
one since Home Alone 2
in 1992. Like in June, the Hollywood studios release major event films
every weekend during the month of November making it extremely difficult
for one film to lead the pack for more than one frame.

Debuting in second
place with a strong opening was Sony's I
Still Know What You Did Last Summer with
$16.5M. Playing in 2,443 locations, the horror sequel averaged a strong
$6,762 per theater. Both the opening gross and average were a bit higher
than the original's which were $15.8M and $6,267 respectively. Starring
the singing/acting teen divas Jennifer Love Hewitt and Brandy, I
Still Know... capitalized on the success
of last year's surprise hit I Know What
You Did Last Summer by bringing back fans
of the original with another damsel-saves-herself-from-distress formula
that has become common in horror films since Scream.

According to Sony's
distribution president Jeff Blake, I Still
Know..., as expected, performed best with
young adults and females. About 63% of the audience came from the 15-25
year-old age group, while the gender split was 53/47. Blake also noted
that the opening weekend crowd was much more racially mixed than for most
recent fright films most likely due to Brandy's drawing power. With a production
cost of $24M, I Still Know What You Did
Last Summer should end up being a profitable
endeavor for Sony Pictures. However, its long-term prospects are questionable
since horror sequels tend to attract a disproportionately large share of
their audience during the debut weekend, plus the film saw a 3% fall on
Saturday compared to Friday instead of the customary uptick.

Brad Pitt entered the
box office charts in third place with his new romance Meet
Joe Black which collected a creepy $15M.
The story of the Grim Reaper who pays a visit by taking a human form opened
in 2,503 theaters and averaged a good $6,000 per site. Also starring Sir
Anthony Hopkins and relative newcomer Claire Forlani, Meet
Joe Black was killed by critics for its
story and three-hour length. The Universal picture, directed by Martin
Brest, was originally slated for a summer release but was pushed to the
holiday season due to production delays and costly budget overruns. Pitt
reportedly snagged a $17.5 million salary for Meet
Joe Black helping to send the budget north
of $80 million.

Universal pegged high
hopes to the film counting on it to help bring the studio out of a year-and-a-half
long box office slump. With its $15M launch, Meet
Joe Black gave Universal its best opening
weekend performance of the year (which isn't saying much). Good word-of-mouth
is needed to make this into a big hit which means moviegoers will need
to ignore the poor reviews. Overall, Meet
Joe Black opened a little stronger than
most of Brad Pitt's previous films which included debuts of $14.3M for
The Devil's Own,
$13.9M for Seven,
and $14M for Legends Of The Fall.

Slipping from second
to fourth was the Denzel Washington-Bruce Willis action thriller The
Siege with $8.1M. Off 42%, the Fox title
has climbed to a cume of $26.4M in ten days and looks headed to a final
domestic tally of about $50M. With the starpower of Willis (despite his
small supporting role) The Siege should
be able to easily surpass that total in the international arena.

Spending its seventh
frame in the top five, Antz
from DreamWorks ate up another $4M boosting its impressive gross to $81.1M.
The durable computer-animated bug flick enjoyed the smallest decline in
the top ten slipping only 28%.

The weekend's other
new wide release was Disney's I'll Be Home
For Christmas starring Home Improvement
star Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Opening six weeks ahead of the holiday it
is named after, the family film grossed just $3.9M from 1,759 theaters
for a weak average of $2,216 per stocking. With a barrage of family films
hitting theaters during the holiday season, Christmas
should fade away quickly and see a wider audience on home video next year.

Dropping out of the
top ten were Rush Hour
with $128.8M in its ninth weekend, Vampires
with $18.5M in its third frame, and Belly
with $7.3M in its sophomore weekend.

In Star
Wars news, Lucasfilm and Fox have announced
that the first theatrical trailer for Star
Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace will
screen at selected theaters in the United States and Canada this Tuesday,
November 17th. This is a special advance screening of the highly-anticipated
trailer which will begin playing in theaters across North America on November
20th and throughout the holiday box office season. To find out exactly
where it will play, visit the Star
Wars official web site.

Compared to projections,
The Waterboy
finished the weekend extremely close to my $24M forecast while my $26M
prediction for I Still Know What You Did
Last Summer was far too optimistic. Meet
Joe Black and I'll
Be Home For Christmas both came within
a notch of my projections of $16M and $5M respectively.

Take this week's NEW
Reader Survey on Adam Sandler. In last
week's survey, readers were asked if Universal's remake of Psycho
would be a flop at the domestic box office. Of 1,625 responses, 55% said
no, 37% voted yes, while 8% did not know.

Be sure to read the
Weekly Rewind column which reports on the biggest
opening weekends of November. This Wednesday's new column will look at
Universal Pictures' recent box office drought. For a review of I
Still Know What You Did Last Summer visit
Chief's Movie Review Page.

The top ten films grossed
$83.5M which was up 33% from last year when The
Jackal opened at number one with $15.2M,
and up 4% from 1996 when Space Jam
debuted at the top spot with $27.5M.

Be sure to check back
on Thursday for a complete summary, including projections, for next
weekend when Will Smith's Enemy of the
State and The
Rugrats Movie open.

This column is updated three times each week
: Thursday (upcoming weekend's summary),
Sunday (post-weekend analysis with
estimates), and Monday night (actuals).
Source : EDI, Exhibitor Relations. Opinions expressed in this column are
those solely of the author.